Are Senior Discounts Available At Laguna?

I love how you immediately summoned all of us locals with just the title and thumbnail and we proceeded to agree completely. The park has 100% fallen off recently, ever since about 2-3 years after Cannibal opened their prices have skyrocketed and nobody I know has gone more than once or twice since. I had a season pass a couple years after cannibal opened and food pricing was already insane, but the guest experience was still fine and everyone was generally a little nicer than more recently. It’s sad that it has exploited the fact that they can charge whatever they want to because nobody can stop them.

TIPS FOR LAGOON: I’m 16 and have a season pass, I know what I’m doing. 1. Best times to be at the park are opening, and towards closing. 2. Run to the rides in the south at opening because everyone runs north to cannibal and Primordial 3. Bring your own food and water 4. If buying food in the park, get it before or after the lunch/dinner rush 5. Go on days that aren’t special events such as dance competitions, or school trips 6. If you’d like a quieter, more peaceful atmosphere, pioneer village sits in the back of the park and almost feels like a different park 7. A season pass is equal to about 2 day passes, so get one if you want to go more than twice 8. Most people leave an hour or two before the park closes, so those are prime times to ride other than opening 9. If you’re just carrying small items like a phone wallet keys etc… pants or shirts with zipable pockets are very nice to avoid lockers

I’ve worked at lagoon for years, and you absolutely nailed this. I can’t have family visit me at work anymore because the pricing is too expensive. And just recently too, they gutted the employee parking to give it all to the guests. I have it good there, but that’s only because I work for a 3rd party company, not lagoon itself (I’m a caricature artist). Lagoon used to be so fun when I was younger, and you could get a season pass for $100, but now it’s over $115 for a single adult day-pass alone! Lagoon has become exponentially more crowded the last few years, and lagoon hasn’t been able to keep up. The new CFO is the cause of this, who is the main reason prices skyrocketed a few years ago. And if you ask any lagoon employee, you’ll hear all about the broken labor laws, broken safety codes, unsafe food standards, etc. lagoon is VERY scummy, and has no problem exploiting their employees.

My friend in Illinois was wanting to take us to Six Flags and so I researched the price, being a Utah resident. I was sitting there dumbfounded as I worked out it would probably be cheaper to go to Six Flags, a park known all over the country, compared to Lagoon. I wish someone would come bring a park to Utah to get Lagoon to settle down.

Heyo! Utah native and worked at lagoon for a season. A couple things: The management is suuuper inconsistent. Mostly because people get promoted having learned different things from different supervisors over the years. Also, the standard training is very basic, and is universally applied to every ride even though each ride has different requirements. Its expected that the super leading the training will fill you in. I often got yelled at for doing things one way when another supervisor signed off on it. Also the different areas. We have 8 areas that we can be assigned to which dictates which rides we will be assigned to train on. There is a handful of supervisors and team leads for each area, and theyre rarely in contact with each other. The only exceptions are the department heads and the top supervisor. Departments have their own problems too. I only ever worked in rides—which is the department that every highschooler in the valley is pushed towards—but they all have different issues that stem from the same vein: Landscaping is constant work for exceptionally low pay. I worked with someone who worked several departments in a span of 18ish years, and he told me all about it. How everyone drank several energy drinks a day (which they offer in the employee kitchen) just to keep up with the demand. In the mornings, i saw so many exhausted teens/young adults slumped over on tables and covered in sweat. Games only works on cash, and the workers have to meet their previous weeks’ earnings or more.

Given the title, this was a lot more positive a review than I expected. Well deserved praise with a lot of issues to deal with. The hard part I think is that due to the amount of people that go, you run into a supply/demand issue. There are already too many people attending that if the price were lower then the population problem becomes even worse. At that point aggressive expansion or another location are pretty much the viable options.

I live right next to the metal factory that makes the rollercoaster parts for lagoon. Whenever I want to drive anywhere, I always have to drive past it. If you’re lucky to get a good view past the huge building and some of the surrounding trees and such, you could see some of the parts they were working on and testing. I remember the most I was able to see was a tallish drop, and then some connecting track that was standing alone and being tested. They literally just had this relatively small chunk of rollercoater running by itself over and over to make sure it was working properly. It was an obscure sight That rollercoaster section I mentioned was for primordial, and this was a few years before lagoon announced that they were getting a new ride, so everyone that lived in my area knew about the new attraction LONG before anyone else did. I also remember seeing some of the parts for cannibal several years ago. It’s really cool to see.

Lagoon holds nostalgic vibes for me – as a young kid, my dad’s company had a “Lagoon Day” for their employees, and we would get to visit once a year. In my teens I spent the money on a season pass, and had a blast with cousins and friends. As a parent, I now grab season passes for my family – we generally get there bout a dozen times a year. I agree with so many point of your article. One of the things that is interesting to me, is that even with the ticket prices (and reading all the comments about said prices), the dang park is packed just about any time it is open. If it wasn’t for season passes, there is no way I would be going – but the season pass price is only about double what a day pass is (no complaints personally). Having the season pass is great, and I don’t feel guilty if we only stay in the park 2-3 hours each time – I can still get “my money’s worth” by the end of the season. Pretty much all of your points were valid, justified, and accurate. I would be interested to see how the Lagoon board would react, or what reasoning they would be willing to share were they to ever watch this article with an unbiased view of outside perspective. Great article review – thanks for sharing!

When you mentioned that you’ve never been to Laguna Beach, it made more sense why you didn’t cover the wristband. If you go to Laguna Beach, they give you a wristband so you still have full access after your handstamp washes off. When I was growing up, my best friend’s family always went to Laguna Beach first for about three-four hours, with coolers for refreshment and lunch. The lazy river and speed slides were my favorite. Haven’t been back in a while, so I still need to try Cannibal. I remember when Samurai and the Rocket first opened up. “Re-Entry” definitely made you question your life choices because they keep you at the top for five seconds to build tension before they shoot you back towards the ground. Very enjoyable and fair review of the park overall. Not necessarily the most mind-blowing amusement park in the world, but a fun place to go with friends and family if you’re looking for a summer outing.

Great review article! Hit everything on the head. Good/great rides. 1. Get rid of the animals. 2. Need security and/or better crowd control. 3. Give some perks to season pass holders. Those things alone would drastically improve the park experience. Also, I feel like the lagoon a beach cleanliness is always like a 6/10 so we don’t really go there. There is also a campsite for people to pitch tents or park trailers.

Just a note as someone who has worked at Frightmares, they have employees that are definitely capable of making adults cry but as a former streetmosphere actor, we were told at some points that we had to “tone down” our acting. I had one instance where I sat in a makeup chair for almost an hour and a half and I almost had to take it all off because it was “too scary”. Julie freed herself actually had to come and approve of it. After that we were told by management that we could only walk around the park, we couldn’t even speak or really act.

I’m a former rides operator and I grew up next to Lagoon. I loved going there as a kid. Lagoon’s strength is in their deep history. The Freeds actually did a great job with the park up until the late seventies. One thing that wasn’t mentioned was how many big names have preformed at Lagoon. The Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and even The Rolling Stones all played at Lagoon. Pioneer Village was the brainchild of Robert Freed and after his death in the early seventies, his brother Peter made it happen. It opened when I was a kid, and it was really cool. They had two steam trains, a stage coach ride and an afternoon shootout. But as Peter aged and Dave took over in the 80’s, Pioneer village became a low priority and hasn’t been maintained. I think Lagoon has a lot of potential, but as was mentioned in the review, the current management is fine with the status-quo of hiring high-school kids and charging close to Disneyland prices. I haven’t been there for years because of this. Hopefully, things will change for the better.

As someone who live in the Seattle area, a theme park desert (Wild Waves does not count), I wish we had a park like Lagoon– even with all its flaws. I visited Lagoon last year and was blown away with the awesome coaster lineup. Cannibal was so fun, Colossus is wildly underrated, and Spider is sneaky good.

I worked as ride operator in the 2020 season, (kiddie land, pioneer village, and wicked) and my god it was horrible. $12/h for 10-12 hours a day, regularly 90°-100°+. I got heat stroke one day, and instead of sending me home, I was sent to work at rattlesnake in the operator booth (where the fans didn’t work). After making me chug my water I was denied a bathroom break for over 30 minutes. Never. Again.

I’m a local and need to say that you did a great job with this article. And thank you for bringing attention to the horrible way the animals are caged. Unfortunately I have been unable to visit Lagoon for years because of the prices. I remember as a child we used to pay around $25 per ticket if we purchased them at our local banks or Costco.

As an operator at lagoon during the 23′ season. TLDR I agree with everything you have said. There needs to be more lockers and the lockers need to be refurbished. They sometimes won’t open, some forget pascode,etc. Then the attendant near the lockers has to call someone to open the lockers. The only exception is primordial there are tons of lockers and the attendants can open them with Ipads unless the lockers system is having trouble. The lines spilling into the midway pisses me off because sometimes the line starts to bleed together and it makes it hard to get around. The lines normally bleed together around cannibal, paratrooper, and skyscraper. Most attendants barely look at handstamps because if your in, then you paid to get in. I have only ever seen one set of tickets, and I don’t know where a attendant got it. The enclosure of cannibal is beatiful but you can’t really see it unless you work it and do a lost Item search at the end of the day. The best time to ride primordial for the shortest wait time is going to before it closes. It closes one hour before park close. The line can be on average from 50-120 minutes. The line averages 2 hours but can go up to 4 hours. Opening day it didn’t finish until 1:00 AM. I didn’t work that day but I have worked on primordial to midnight. The majority of 14/15 year old employees work druning the summer. Some only get shade at their post. They should get shade and a fan like the operators. The supervisors come around regularly to refill water bottles and you get a cold water bottle around midday.

Great review. Completely agree with the majority of your insights (good and “needs improvement”). The queue lines spilling out onto the midway has always been super odd and even confusing at times. Had to laugh when you mentioned that many of Lagoons patrons have only visited Lagoon and/or Disneyland. So true! That really is NOT an exaggeration. Utah has an odd and even unhealthy fixation on Disney IMO. Also had another laugh when you mentioned the ignorance of so many guests that think that the “White Rollercoaster” is a typical rollercoaster experience and that somehow if any other wooden rollercoaster has banked turns or other elements it must be a crazy new modern type of woody. So many of Lagoons guests just simply haven’t been to many other parks. I love that it’s one of the few parks you can still bring in your own food. Can you imagine Disney, Six Flags, Cedar Fair or many other parks/chains allowing this? Very underrated perk especially for families! I’m guessing that Pioneer Village will get some other new ride attraction to replace the Log ride. I would love to see a coaster built back there. Or even tear down a few of the empty food pavilions to build a new attraction back there. (They have SO many eating pavilions!) Sadly there are residents that live in closer proximity to the back of the park and I’m sure there are constraints regarding noise and sound levels that could restrict rides such as a coaster back there. Lagoon is scheduled to move their current parking lot to the north end of the park by Primordial.

I was a former ride operator from about 15-18. I don’t have anything to add to the review but I do have stories. Fun fact, the carousel is older than the state of Utah. Edit: Actually, the whole park is, by about 10 years. I used to run the baby boats in Kiddieland, and on one occasion a peacock leaped over the gates and into the center island, and I had to unload the kids I just loaded in while my manager chased the peacock around the island like a road runner cartoon. The peacock just kind of gracefully leapt back out almost as soon as I was done unloading. Another time, a kid fell into the moat while I was walking another kid out. His mom undid his buckle for him. It’s a tiny pool but it’s a ride for tiny kids, so he was fully submerged and at one point the boats rolled over where he was. I had to shove the boats back and pull him out. Mom tried to yell at me and I was like ‘had you waited like 2 minutes I could have gotten him out safely’. Easily the worst ride to run, if only because of the parents. Carousel was decent though. The bumper cars is also fun and after hours employees have to park them all in lines near the exit. You can reliably drive them backwards, you just have to turn the wheel about 180 degrees, and the steering is kind of inverted. The TerrorRide is one of the locations in the park with a confirmed death. AFAIK, it was an older gentleman trying to get off the ride. The loading area is operator controlled but you have no control over the ride once it enters and exits the building, and if you’re not careful with timing, the cart unloading people could be hit by another cart exiting the building.

My family has a strong connection to lagoon. In pioneer village there is a train museum that my great grandfather donated. My brother and cousin also works here. We went there last month actually. It’s really fun if you know what your doing. We went every other year as we where growing up and it was amazing. I wish we can go more but as he said it’s super expensive

I grew up going to Lagoon, and I used to love it. The animals have absolutely broken my heart for decades. No animal deserves that treatment….It’s now, unfortunately, overpriced. But I do appreciate their propensity towards innovation, and I do recognize how many coasters we have that are cutting edge. Lagoon abuses animals. There is no excuse for that.

for being really the only option for residents in Utah I’m just glad it’s a pretty damn good one. I’ve always had great experiences there with very little to complain about, some of the attractions are unique and bring in alot of people. This place really was alot of my childhood and it does create fun jobs and a culture in high school of working summers with friends. Pioneer village is underrated and makes for a really nice date that isn’t just standing around in lines 🙂

Excellent review. Lagoon is less than an hour away from my house, so I bought season passes in 2020, 2021, and 2022 before prices got way out of hand. Critiques are spot-on. In addition: the accessibility situation is bad. Not a lot of accommodations for wheelchairs, for example. You’d think the shortage of restrooms would be a real pain point too. Sometimes something shifts in your guts on a ride and you suddenly HAVE to go, ya know? — Furthermore, the lagoon is FILTHY. They used to have paddle boats and other water activities, but I suspect you could catch some freaky microbes from that water.

I think that a lot of the flaws would be ironed out if the employees were treated better. I worked there for 3 years, and I was never treated like a human a single time. When they were building primordial, they took away go huge chunk of the employee parking lot to do construction, and they also took away access to the picnic staging lot (where big groups go to unload their stuff). The employees were forced to be shoved into the small employee parking area- and many don’t know that the employee parking lot is also the overflow parking lot- so if you work there and come in later in the day on like a Saturday, you’re like- a good 20min walk away from the employee entrance. Then- there’s the picnic staging lot (referred to as employees as the PC lot). I worked as a supervisor in the picnics department and I had to deal with so so SO many unhappy groups. We had to let them in through a weird little gate that I didn’t have the key to, so we would often have a situation where a guest is yelling at us through a gate and we seriously can’t do anything about it because we literally cannot access the help they need. It also caused a lot of issues where the guests needed to drive through a little neighborhood in order to get in through the back of the park. It was terrible. I didn’t have a completely terrible time, I did get to go to a lot of parties, but there were so, SO SO SO many flaws that seriously don’t make me miss the park at all.

Great thoughts, nailed a ton of stuff. Few things I’d like to add that I think drive your points even further: Demographics in Utah are so much different from any other park in the country. Families and entertainment has astronomical demand. I think in addition to not being incentivized to change, Lagoon is using basic supply and demand and taking huge advantage of it. It’s important to note that rarely are theme parks competing with other theme parks, even when in close proximity (few exceptions here and there). They are competing with ever other entertainment offering nearby. While Utah has a large family entertainment offering, it’s still really underserved and everything everywhere is always packed. Lagoon has bumped/kept prices high to make the park operable. If it was down at a $50 day ticket, all day every day would be max capacity – even now it’s already extremely busy nearly every day. Utah residents will pay the high price for this and similar activities because it’s necessary and fit for the family. Lagoon being an Amusement Park monopoly certainly drives that further. Utah will continue seeing entertainment space improved and added, but their population growth is outpacing all of it. Another amusement park in Utah County area would definitely drive demand out of Lagoon so they could see more reasonable changes. They just wouldn’t be investing in Primordial-type attractions anytime in the future (that’s okay). I think ultimately they are caught in-between improving guest experience, and managing demand.

I’ve lived in utah my whole life and when I was young I used to go to lagoon with my family pretty often, or as often as one could when barely able to afford a loaf of bread some weeks. It’s upsetting that the prices have skyrocketed and we can hardly go anymore, not to mention the workers looking exhausted and fighting to stay standing. Though if you still want to go, try to go during Frightmares (aka the BEST time to go in my opinion). Pioneer Village is haunted during Frightmares if you didn’t know, especially at night. I’ve seen some crazy stuff.

I have never visited Lagoon, but I hope to soon. I knew that it was basically a monopoly, but I didn’t know about how it was all affecting guest experience. Those lines on the midway look like a line-jumpers dream come true. I didn’t know about the animals. I am totally supportive of zoos and marine parks taking care of animals that need it and such, but they should be properly taken care of. Six Flags over Texas used to have the policy of no single riders in the back row or in whatever row is the furthest back loaded row. In other words, if there are 3 people waiting to ride, and 2 are waiting for the front, the single rider cannot get on, even in row 2. That policy was so that everyone on board has a witness either next to them or behind them. When they realized this was a silly policy that actually does nothing, they discontinued it in 2020.

Went last month when it was 100 degrees outside. It was EMPTY and we had a great time. You can bring as much food and drink you as you want and there is a water park inside. Great Park and lots of fun for the whole family. Tons of seating and places to relax. The no security thing is great…this isn’t Magic Mountain…if you know what I’m saying.

having gone there both last year and this year, I feel like the new generation are really wanting to improve the park, between Primordial’s lockers, the temporary line, I even had guest services exchange something for me, and it’s not just on the guest’s end either, from what I’m hearing things are also improving on the employee’s end as well

I remember when admission hit $60.00 and only went one time after that because it was a company thing and I got a big discount. But that’s something they would do. They would open the park for special occasions and/or events and it made for a great afternoon with almost no lines. The one thing I always liked about Lagoon was the ability to bring your own food in. Families kind of stake out a table in the pavilions with their coolers and then all you need to do is go to your table and grab a sandwich and hit the park again. So much better than paying for what food they produce in there. Pioneer Village was always a great place to wind down a bit after lunch.

Going to Lagoon for the second time I went with some friends for a fun little trip. We went on Rattlesnake rapids multiple times near the end of our day and got totally SOAKED. Within those multiple times we went through we became pretty good buddies with the operators who would ask us each time “going again?” With a smile. It was a great experience and very fun with every other ride we hit including Cannibal and Colossus: The Fire Dragon. Overall an amazing experience with many great memories. However the one thing that disappointed me was the prices for both park entry and food. Granted every park up charges for food within but $7 for a soft pretzel seemed a little too much. Their yearly cups that allow refills for lower prices seem pretty okay but I went recently and their Primordial cups seemed a little pricey. Of course they are metal but $50-60 for a metal cup that gets you low priced refills until the next year passes is just a little bit of a shame in my opinion.

I think you make a lot of great points. I’ve been going to Lagoon for years. I’ve been to parks in other states, so I know there’s better options. But I don’t hear about people talking about those parks in the same kind of romanticized way people do about Lagoon. If there were another park trying to startup, I think they’d face a unique kind of brand loyalty and stubbornness in attracting customers. One of many add-on effects of having no competition for so many years.

When I was a kid living in Northern Utah, they had THE BEST haunted houses at Halloween. I remember the March of Dimes one had a giant spider that would trap people in the room, and the Haunted Old Mill had rickety staircases and very creepy atmosphere. My favorite was The Haunted Mansion (I think that’s what it was called). The legend was that it served as an insane asylum during the rest of the year, and if the patients were well behaved, they could participate in scaring the visitors. At the end, they had the typical chain saw guy that chased you out of the back, but right after that, there was a rig that resembled a big truck that would light up and honk right as you came out. I also remember the people in the haunted houses could touch the visitors. That made it extra creepy.